Numerous manufacturers sell grain drills which are utilized extensively throughout the world for planting grains, such as wheat, soybeans, oats, barley, etc. Grain drills are towed by tractors and plant wide swaths, such as 10 or more feet, with a single pass. The towing of the grain drill with a tractor provides the power for the metered planting of the seed into the furrows. Grain drills further may be either of the no till type, which do not require previous plowing and discing of the ground, or the till type, which require previously plowing and discing of the ground.
Commercially available grain drills are highly sophisticated machines which provide tremendous efficiency enabling farmers to plant large tracts of land with grain. A typical soybean farmer may plant a thousand or more acres a year with a single grain drill. Thus, anything which adversely affects the operation of a grain drill has tremendous impact on the economics of farming using grain drills.
Commercially available grain drills do not contain on-board devices which permit the farmer to accurately determine the rate of planting of seed per acre in terms of weight per acre. A grain drill has an acreage counter which indicates approximately the number of acres which have been covered during planting. However, commercially available grain drills do not have on-board weighing devices which permit the weight of seed, such as wheat, soybeans, oats, barley, etc. to be accurately determined while planting is ongoing.
Seeds may be purchased in bags having a uniform weight, such as 50 lbs., which permits the farmer to load the hopper of a grain drill with an accurately weighed amount of seed which ultimately permits the farmer to determine the rate of planting of seed in weight per acre by dividing the total number of acres which have been planted during the time that the seed was planted by the number of preweighed bags used to fill the grain drill seed hopper times the weight of seed per bag. The filling of the hopper with preweighed bags of seed is cumbersome, requires the opening of individual bags involving substantial time, and prevents the farmer from purchasing seed in bulk. Seed purchased in bulk is cheaper which would result in a net savings of the cost per acre for planting if the farmer could accurately determine the weight of the bulk seed which would permit the foregoing calculation of pounds of seed per acre to be made to enable the farmer to determine the actual rate of planting in terms of weight per acre. However, the purchase of seed in bulk does not provide the farmer with an accurate determination of the weight of seed which is placed in the hopper. Therefore, after the filling of a grain drill hopper with seed from a bulk source is completed, while the farmer can determine approximately the total number of acres which were planted from the acre counter, there is no accurate measure of the weight of the seed which was placed in the hopper from a bulk purchase or container.
Thus, farmers today who use state of the art grain drills are faced with a constant dilemma of how to accurately determine the rate of planting of seed in terms of weight per acre to accurately control the rate of planting which permits optimization of crop yield. That dilemma either requires the purchase of seed in preweighed bags with its attendant inefficiencies and additional expense or makes it impossible for the farmer to calculate the weight rate of planting of seed in an accurate manner which results typically in not planting the grain seed at the ideal weight rate per acre which is necessary to optimize yield.
Furthermore, even if the farmer knows precisely the weight of seed which is placed in the hopper of a grain drill, there is no current mechanism for “on the fly” determination of the rate of planting of seed in pounds per acre as the drill is operated before the seed hopper is emptied. Commercially available grain drills have a mechanical calibrated metering device which has a linear scale having increasing numbers which represent an increased rate of planting. However, because of the variation of the size of seed which is planted and the different types of seeds which are planted with a grain drill, the numerically graduated scale for controlling the rate of planting provides nothing about the weight rate of seed being planted and provides information on only a relative rate of planting.
Experienced farmers develop an understanding of the desired rate of planting of seed in terms of weight measure per acre. If the farmer accurately plants seed with a grain drill at the optimum rate, the yield of the resultant crop is optimized and further, the overall cost of seed to obtain the maximum crop yield is reduced. On one hand, if less than the optimum quantity of seed per acre is planted, the resultant yield will be less than the optimum yield resulting in the farmer realizing less income per acre than would be realized if the optimum rate of seed was planted per acre. On the other hand, if the rate of planting of seed is too great per acre, a decreased yield is realized, which is less than the optimum yield, resulting in the waste of seed which represents a substantial expense to the farmer. Also, the resultant plants may be down because of their high density, which makes it difficult for the farmer to combine the plants at harvest. For example, if a farmer is planting 1,000 acres of soybeans with a grain drill and makes a mistake of overestimating the rate of planting of seeds at a rate of 5 lbs. per acre, a total of 5,000 lbs. of wasted seed occurs which represents a substantial expense over $1,000.00 with no return on investment and a possible lessened yield because of over density in planting.
Additionally, with current state of the art grain drills, while the rate of deposition of seed may be varied by changing the setting of the control of the relative rate of planting of seed, there is no way for the farmer on the fly to determine the actual rate of planting of seed by planting only a small area. As previously described, the only way to precisely determine the weight rate of planting seed is to accurately count the number of preweighed bags of seed which are placed in the hopper and after the entire hopper is planted, the total weight of seed in the hopper is computed by multiplying the number of bags used by the weight of seed per bag and that total weight is divided by the number of planted acres. This process is time consuming and wasteful because if the rate of planting of seed is set either too high or too low, all of the land which was planted with the seed from the full hopper is not optimally planted at the right rate to maximize the yield and to reduce the expense of seed to the minimum amount per acre.
Additionally, while commercially available grain drills may contain a sight glass for viewing if there is seed in the drill, such viewing devices do not provide a view when the drill is close to being empty. This forces the farmer into the situation that it is possible for the hopper to be empty while the farmer is continuing to plant seed. The resultant acreage must be reseeded or worse, may not be seeded at all until after the seed germinates. In any event, because of the pressures that are involved with weather conditions to plant seed with a grain drill at the right time, the farmer requires the ability to know precisely when additional seed must be added to the hopper which may necessitate a helper to go to a seed supplier to obtain seed at the end of the day after the seed supplier is closed. If the farmer cannot accurately determine what the weight of seed is in the hopper at all times, it may be impossible to determine with enough lead time that additional seed must be purchased from the seed supplier or otherwise obtained from the farmer's storage of seed.
Thus, while it is highly desirable for a farmer to know the weight rate of planting of seed per acre and further the quantity of seed in the hopper of a grain drill at all times, none of the currently commercially available grain drills permit an accurate determination on the fly of the amount of seed present in the hopper and furthermore, do not permit the calculation of the weight rate of planting of seed over a small number of acres less than the number of acres required to empty exhaust all of the preweighed seed which has been placed in the hopper. There is a long-felt need in farming to provide a low cost and accurate device for determining the weight rate of planting of seed per acre and further the weight of seed at all times in the hopper of a grain drill.
FIG. 1 schematically illustrates a Model 750 no till grain drill 10 manufactured by the John Deere Company. The grain drill 10 is comprised of a rigid frame 12 having a plurality of wheels 14 for supporting the drill during rolling over a surface of ground to be planted with grain and a grain hopper 16 for containing the grain to be planted in the ground. The grain drill has a no till planting mechanism 17 which is comprised of a plurality of no till planting units 19 which extend away from the grain hopper 16 to the ground as illustrated in FIGS. 1 and 3. The planting mechanism 17 receives seeds from the grain hopper 16 and conveys the seeds to the no till planting units 19 which bury the seeds below the ground in a known manner.
The frame 12 has a pair of longitudinally extending frame members 18 which are hollow in rectangular hollow cross section and which are part of the rigid support of the grain drill. The frame 12 further has a plurality of cross frame members, not illustrated, which extend across the full width of the drill to form a rectangular space frame for supporting the weight of the seed hopper 16 across the width of the grain drill. While FIG. 1 illustrates a single seed hopper 16, it should be understood that wider grain drills have two seed hoppers bolted side by side to the frame, as illustrated in FIG. 3, which represents a John Deere Model 750 grain drill, such as, for example, permitting a 20-foot grain drill to be formed from two 10-foot seed hoppers which are individually used on 10-foot grain drills. The plurality of cross members are connected to the longitudinally extending frame members 18 to define the overall rigid space frame structure from which the plurality of wheels 14 are suspended. Each hopper 16 is bolted to the longitudinally extending members 18 at four corners thereof. The entire frame structure of the grain drills of FIGS. 1 and 3 is conventional and well known.
FIG. 2 illustrates an enlarged section of the longitudinal side of the grain drill 10 of FIG. 1. As illustrated, the outboard portion of the longitudinally extending frame member 18 is removed by removing bolts (not illustrated) to permit access from underneath in opening 19 to the horizontally extending member 22 as illustrated. In the Model 750 and other commercially available grain drills from John Deere, a total of eight holes 24 are drilled through the horizontal member 22 and face the bottom horizontal surface 26 of hopper 16. Pairs of the holes 24 face the four bottom corners of hopper 16. Eight tapped holes 28 extend through the bottom horizontal surface 26 and are in alignment with the holes 24 to permit the rigid attachment of the hopper 16 to the frame 12 by threading fasteners 30 through the hole 24 into engagement with the threads of a corresponding hole 28 as illustrated. The use of fasteners 30 in the prealigned holes 24 and 28 permits the farmer to readily remove the hopper if service is required or otherwise removal is necessary and further simplifies the manufacturing process. The fasteners 30 provide an extremely strong and rigid connection so that the hopper 16 does not shift relative to the frame 12 and further applies the weight of the grain in the hopper to the frame 12 when loaded and rolling across the surface of the ground during planting in the conventional manner.
As illustrated, the opening 19 on the outboard side of the horizontally extending frame members 18 provides access to secure the fasteners 30 from underneath to the holes 24 and 28 at the manufacturing facility and thereafter to permit the farmer to have access if necessary to either tighten the fasteners or to remove them if the hopper 16 is to be removed from the frame 12.
The grain drill 10 contains a conventional acreage counter 32 which provides a running count of the number of acres planted and consists of a rotary set of wheels similar to that of a speedometer which are calibrated to read the actual number of acres which are planted and a control 34 for setting the rate of planting of seeds. The control 34 has a series of teeth which interlock with a movable handle which is rotated relative to a graduated numerically calibrated scale for setting the rate of planting. The rate of planting is calibrated such that higher numbers indicate a higher rate of planting but not in terms of a calibrated seed weight rate per acre. However, it should be understood that while the acreage counter is reasonably accurate in practice, there is no available mechanism to calibrate the weight per acre of seeds which are being planted purely by use of the control 34 with the only effective mechanism being to distribute preweighed seeds and divide the weight by the number of acres planted as described above.
FIG. 3 illustrates a prior art grain drill 11 which is generically in accordance with FIG. 1, except that two seed hoppers 16 are mounted side by side. Grain drills 11 for planting wide swaths include multiple hoppers 16, such as two side by side hoppers as illustrated. The frame 12 is wider than the prior art of FIG. 1 to support the increased weight, but overall the function of the grain drill 11 is the same as the prior art grain drill 10 of FIG. 1 and also has the same deficiencies as described above of not providing the farmer with the ability to determine the weight of seed in the hopper and the weight rate of planting of seed on the fly.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,449,915, 4,465,211, 4,539,921, 4,697,173, 5,595,131 and 5,323,721 disclose systems used for the planting of seeds. U.S. Pat. No. 4,465,211 discloses a weight indicator for a seeder but such device has no application to grain drills because of its construction. U.S. Pat. No. 2,449,915 discloses an indicator for indicating the level of seed in a seed hopper but does not disclose any weighing mechanism. U.S. Pat. No. 4,539,921 discloses a modular drill frame construction. U.S. Pat. No. 4,697,173 discloses a monitoring apparatus which monitors various parameters of agricultural seeding, including the level of seeds stored in a hopper of a seeder and a sensor for providing a measure of the rate of movement of the seeder over the ground. U.S. Pat. No. 5,959,131 discloses a flexible and resilient support for a grain box of a grain drill. U.S. Pat. No. 5,323,721 discloses a planter monitoring system which determines a number of parameters of planting. None of the aforementioned patents discloses a mechanism which may be used to accurately weigh the seed within a hopper of a grain drill and to provide the farmer with an accurate measure of the weight rate of seeds being planted.